Friday, March 23, 2007

Andrew Roberts: 'Name Dropper-in-Chief'!

Andrew Roberts's Spectator Diary this week is a veritable lesson in name dropping - as he himself admits. He relates his book tour of the United States two weeks ago and in the space of 900 words he drops this list of the great and the good...

Phew! Of course the only reason I highlight this is that I was at one of the events he mentions but for some reason he omitted to mention my name in his piece. Bitter? Moi? Shurely shome mishtake... Just to show you how much I admire Andrew I shall encourage you to buy his superb book HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES 1900-2000 HERE!

I met Andrew Roberts when he was giving one of his talks and he was pretty impressive . I was able to bowl him an unplayable googly of a question though concerning the integrity of the concept of an English people though.

The odd thing is that throughout the talk I quite genuinely assumed he was sitting down . When I found he had been standing I was sorely tempted to pick him up and see what he looked like from different angles ,perhaps ruffle his hair ,or put different hats on him.His political fate must surely be to represent the lollipop League ..the lollipop league , the Lollipo League ......etc.

I was impressed with Andrew Roberts when, soon after this book appeared, I emailed him about what I considered to be a serious omission from the book. He replied pretty promptly accepting the omission and saying that he would use it in his speeches. (The omission? Discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin)

Roberts pretends to be a toff while actually the heir to a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, and he is one of several pretended Eurosceptics who are signatories to The Henry Jackson Society, with its call for a single European defence capability under overall American command.

He is also a key proponent of the theory of the Anglosphere, which is gaining ground, not least in Washington: within neoconservatism, particular attention must be paid to the total Americanisation of Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But in fact America has two founding peoples. One is indeed of Anglo-Celtic descent. This compels the strongest possible economic, social, cultural and political ties to each and all of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But the other is of West African slave descent. That compels ties no less strong with each and all of the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean. And there is a vast common heritage shared by the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, throughout the world. It includes the English language.

But it is also includes blood ties. All African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans have Anglo-Celtic blood. Likewise, huge numbers of Anglo-Celtic people have African blood, not just in the Americas, but right here in the British Isles, and therefore also in later settler societies.

All but two of the English-speaking countries in the Caribbean freely retain the same Head of State as four of the six Anglosphere countries, and vice versa. Those in the former category thereby declare the latter’s Anglo-Celtic identity to be integral to their own, and those in the latter category (including Britain) thereby declare the former’s West African slave-descended identity to be integral to their own. (There is also a Pacific dimension, which is just as important.)

No wonder, then, that neoconservatives identify the Anglosphere in terms exclusive of the African dimension, and wish to Americanise, along neoconservative lines, the economies, cultures, societies and political systems of the countries thus identified.

Americanistaion must include the abolition of the monarchy, the standing contradiction of the whole ridiculous, racist theory. God Save The Queen!

And God save that other, not unconnected, set of characteristics binding together fully five of the six Anglosphere countries: the universal and comprehensive Welfare State and the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwitten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. All this, even in aspiration, the neocons, such as Roberts, would sweep away across the islands, Canada and the Antipodes.

Furthermore, God save God! The tradition common to the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, embodied by the monarchy and expressing itself as (among much else) social democracy, is profoundly Christian, contrary to neoconservatism's roots in Schachtmanite Trotskyism, in the writings of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, in Zionism, and indeed vin the fiercely rationalist and deist thought of the American Founding Fathers; it also has roots in extremely anti-British conspiracy theories about upper-class Anglophile networks in the US and elsewhere.

To all of this has Roberts signed up (along with Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey, Denis MacShane, Gisela "Vote Bush" Stuart, et al), and he now tours the world promoting it. Hardly finger lickin' good, is it?